1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for controlling standby power, and more particularly to a standby power controller for monitoring individual states of peripheral devices connected to a computer and a current state of the computer, and completely blocking a power-supply voltage from being applied to the peripheral devices and the computer according to the monitoring result, such that it blocks the occurrence of standby power.
2. Related Prior Art
Recently, a variety of power-saving electric appliances have been increasingly developed to accomplish energy-saving and environment-protection purposes, such that they have been widely used throughout the world. As a variety of power-saving electronic fluorescent lamps using a power semiconductor have rapidly come into widespread use in the Republic of Korea since the beginning of the 1990's, a high power-saving effect has been established in an illumination field. A plurality of countries have divided an energy efficiency grade of electric appliances into first to fifth energy efficiency grades to allow such energy-saving appliances to come into widespread use.
The most important matter to determine the above-mentioned energy efficiency grade is standby power.
For example, a TV using a remote-controller is called a preheater, and is designed to immediately display a screen image in response to a switching-ON signal or to consume remote-control power, such that it unavoidably consumes power on the condition that a user does not take a TV plug out of a wall although the user turns off the TV.
The amount of standby power occupies about 11% of total household power consumption according to academic research. In the case of reducing the amount of standby power, annual energy costs can be reduced by about 33,000 won for each household, and annual energy costs can be reduced by about 500 billion Won in whole country as a whole. In the case of OECD member countries, the amount of power of about 10%˜15% of average household power consumption has been consumed as annual standby power, such that unnecessary consumption of standby power has been considered to be the most serious problem of power consumption in the world.
The above-mentioned standby power has been unfavorably named “Power Vampire” by public opinion organizations in the United States since the occurrence of the California power crisis in 2001. The US government has announced the Presidential Order dictating that products which do not satisfy the requisite 1-Watt standby power shall be excluded from governmental procurement.
European Union (EU) has established a standby power reference by announcing the Power Efficiency Principles in Brussels. The Japanese Government has also established a variety of rules associated with standby power, such that it has increasingly concentrated upon development of improved standby power technologies in conjunction with associated enterprises.
In the meantime, with the increasing development of computers and the widespread of multimedia, a plurality of peripheral devices is connected to the computers for use in individual households and offices. For example, a plurality of peripheral devices, for example, a monitor, a speaker, a printer, a scanner, and a PC camera, etc., are generally connected to a single computer. In order to supply a power-supply voltage to the computer and the peripheral devices, a multi-consent for use in the computer is generally used.
However, the peripheral devices are used by only a user command generated when a computer main body is currently operated, such that the user must directly power off individual devices when the computer is not in use, resulting in greater inconvenience of use. For example, if a plug of the computer is connected to the socket although the computer is powered off, i.e., in the case of a standby time, or if the computer or a specific peripheral device is not in use for a long period of time on the condition that the computer is powered on, i.e., in the case of an idle time, the user must directly power off individual devices. The amount of power consumed for the idle time is greater than that consumed for the standby time, such that it is considered to be a very serious problem.
In order to reduce the amount of power consumption during the standby time, a first method for mounting a manually-operable switch to the multi-consent to control power on/off operations, and a second method for detecting a current of a power-supply voltage transmitted from a computer socket to a computer main body, and blocking peripheral devices from receiving a power-supply voltage when the computer is powered off are well known in the art. A representative example is described in Korean Utility Model Registration No. 20-218843, issued on 19 Jan. 2001, entitled “Power-Saving Multi-Consent”, which is hereby incorporated by reference. Korean Utility Model Registration No. 20-218843 describes a method for detecting on/off states of a computer according to a current detection scheme, and blocks a power-supply voltage from being applied to peripheral devices when the computer is powered off.
However, in the case of the idle time, i.e., in the case where a computer or specific peripheral device is not in use for a long period of time on the condition that a user powers on the computer, there is no solution to accomplish the power-saving effect.